A Guide to Selecting Association Management Software

Association management software can make your life easier, provide value to your members, and save your organization time and money—whether you are a Property Manager or an administrator of a Residents Association (RA), Homeowners Association (HOA), or Community Association (CA). We want to help you identify your organization’s particular needs, choose the right software, and be prepared for the big rollout. Let’s begin!

This guide is for administrators of Managed Communities, Community Associations, Community Leagues, RAs, HOAs, Self-managed HOAs, and Property Managers. When talking about these types of associations, we get the same question: “What is the difference between these groups?” Thus we begin the guide by defining the terms.

Various Membership-Based Associations

Community Associations: non-profit volunteer organization sanctioned by a municipality and dependent upon voluntary membership and fundraising to operate

Residents Associations & Homeowners Associations: non-profit organization that manages assets owned by the association for the benefit of the owners/residents.

Whether you are a property manager, an HOA administrator, or hold a similar role in your association, you need efficient systems and processes to communicate to your members, collect fees, schedule events, and more. That is where this discussion turns to association management software.

What Association Management Software Can Do For You

As a community or homeowners association manager/administrator, you have to juggle the many tasks that come with events, managing members, and keeping up with payments. This can be a frustrating experience when working with software that doesn’t meet all of your needs.

HOAs/RAs need: software that manages properties (property database) and members (user/member database). Memberships are tied to the property database.

CAs need: software that manages member (user/member database). Memberships are tied to the member database.

Important: Membership software that has only one main database to manage both properties and members is inadequate.

Most membership software solutions use one user database to manage properties and members. At annual billing season, however, these single database softwares are unable to properly invoice the properties for the memberships, addressed to the owners. Further issues arise when attempting to retain financial and historical data for properties, separate from any users that may be linked to the property. Ivrnet Central partnered with leading industry experts to determine the needs and the necessary functionality of HOA/RA membership management software in order to create the most effective and efficient software to meet the needs of HOA/RA organizations specifically and membership driven organizations in general.

What else do these groups need in association management software?

Communication:

Communicate with members

Allow members to opt-in to their channels of choice (email, phone, automated or voice recordings, sms text)

Things Many Associations Overlook

Customer experience: Will the software be easy to use and manage? What will the online experience be like for your members?

Security and compliance: Data security, privacy, and PCI compliance are important areas to consider when selecting a platform.

Availability, downtime: Is your cloud-based system reliable, dependable? Ivrnet Central has a 99.999% availability record. We are mission-critical for the delivery of services to governments in the case of a crisis. All of our systems have multiple redundancies. We even have triple backup for power supply. Ivrnet is the highest priority for power and telecommunications in the event of crisis or disaster.

Support and training: Does your training include 24/7 support, video training, knowledge base? What other training options do you foresee needing?

Set up and deployment: Consider the time and effort that goes into the setup and deployment of the software. What is the process like and what resources does your software team dedicate to your success?

Administrative resources and time: What kinds of resources are you dedicating to managing your association right now? What efficiencies might you gain by choosing a robust platform with features to help you save time and resources?

Accounting/financial considerations: Consider administrative resources and time spent on the financial/accounting/bookkeeping side of things. Does your platform or software provide accurate and useful financial information and reporting? Does the software provide efficiencies for your accounting and bookkeeping processes, helping to reduce administrative resources dedicated to financial reconciliation and accounting/bookkeeping efforts?

Communication options: Does the platform give you robust text messaging capabilities, member opt-ins, automated call/email/fax/text, and more? Does your organization need to send out routine or emergency messages? Can you notify members of outstanding invoices and allow them to pay automatically over the phone or web? You can do all of this with Ivrnet Central.

Processes and best practices (does the software integrate and work with industry best practices): Is your platform and the team behind the platform familiar with your particular challenges? Do they understand and solve for database management best practices for associations and membership-based organizations?

Software designed and sold by/to industry experts: We designed our software to solve peculiar problems for RAs/HOAs, Property Managers, Community Associations, and others like you who couldn’t find software that fit their needs. Ivrnet maintains a team of industry experts who have been in your shoes and are working with clients in the association industry on a daily basis.

One of the greatest risks to your organization is the security of your transactions and members’ personal information. We have you covered with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Compliance, Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation, Privacy of Information and secure (in Canada) data storage. We maintain commitments to governments and large corporations, and operate under the strictest security and compliance protocols. You have peace of mind knowing we are accountable to the highest standards.

Ivrnet has a 99.999% availability record. We are mission-critical for the delivery of services to governments in the case of a crisis. All of our systems have multiple redundancies. We even have triple backup for power supply. Ivrnet is the highest priority for power and telecommunications in the event of crisis or disaster.

Conclusion:

Whether you are an administrator of an RA/HOA or Community Association, or a Property Manager, association management software can make your life easier, provide value to your members, and save your organization time and money. Once you assess your organization’s needs and consider the most important components of your platform, you can make an informed decision regarding which software is right for you.

Watch the video below to learn more about Ivrnet Central and what it can do for your association.